Multiple documents - slowness workaround

To improve speed performance, It was suggested to me to split my large documents into many smaller documents. In addition to causing overall part/assembly organization chaos, this approach now requires that I constantly update using versions when working in my now multiple documents. This adds significant opportunity for confusion/error in addition to lots of manual effort and time. How can we get around this issue in order to have a smooth workflow, not requiring constant manual updates?

General feedback

Hopefully I can get around these issues. Until then, I just want to say that from a layperson's perspective, Onshape speed is a big problem. I love Onshape, but like others, I've run into significant speed issues with it.

Whether it's having sketches that are "too complex" (it doesn't take much to get there, it seems) or having a handful of threaded fasteners in a model, or having more than one person work simultaneously, or anything less than a 100% pristine internet connection, there are many speed pitfalls within Onshape that will cause your loading icon to spin for a very, very long time. It's gotten to become a really big issue in my company. Very simple modifications take hours when they really should take mere minutes. It's actually been quite embarrassing in front of customers, who have asked me if Onshape is a viable program because of this.

I'm not abusing the system, I don't have extreme expectations. As I write this, I've been waiting literally 10 minutes for a simple split operation to finish. There's no way, absolutely no way that this wait time is proportional to the complexity of what I'm doing. Something is hanging up in your server room or something - maybe it's a rat chewing on the fiber optic cable, I don't know. But something bad is definitely going on.

In anticipation of the wave of guru scorn, yes, I know there are tips, tricks, and workarounds to increase speed. I'm giving you honest feedback as a layperson who is just using Onshape in a very reasonable fashion with rather simple documents- documents that are nowhere near the complexity that traditional CAD programs handle with ease.

I too have noticed that performance as complexity increases may be an issue to be sure. I know internet speeds will dramatically increase in the future as well as server speeds, but these "spinning-wait" interruptions will be difficult to overcome knowing that it wouldn't happen nearly as often with the same design in another CAD system.

In the example you've shared I noticed it took a minute or two to activate and start working on the either of the two drawings shown below. I realize that Onshape has to rebuild/update anything that may have changed. However, why can't this updated rebuild drawing information "always be processing in the background" as to the updated rebuild?

For example, I just opened this document up and had to wait for rebuild of something. Why wasn't this already done with the document sitting in the database? Upon opening a document with no changes or anything done, you would think everything in the document will be processed and ready to go! Like starting to work on any of those two drawings.

I would think Onshape would utilize the cloud of servers to "always-be-updating" even if the user isn't in an active document yet...

Any information on how Onshape currently processes information would be helpful short of utilizing multiple documents etc... for organization.

@Don_Van_Zile You're right - these drawings routinely take over a minute to open, if they want to open at all. It's a drawing, it shouldn't have to reference every single part in the document, yet that's essentially what Onshape is telling me when they say that the document is getting too big. Why should overall document size affect operating in one tiny, isolated corner of the document? The inner workings don't seem to be efficient. I'm sure someone can chime in and give a technical explanation, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable

The link to the part studio took me about 10 seconds to fully load. The drawings took about the same amount of time.Drawing load speeds have definitely improved from what they had been, but I will say that I've noticed that drawings can still take quite a while to load sometimes.

Neil, really? that's not very helpful. I want to know why my projects are slow so I can fix the issues and get the speed back that I know should be there. I haven't read the rest of the thread yet but I am hearing Dan's pain! I am also hitting the wall (almost literally) on projects too, yesterday was spent waiting on simple stuff to rebuild which normally happens in a split second, I am hoping it was a poor internet connection and today will be better but not a very high probability that is the case.

No worries, Neil my comment may be slightly out of context. Unfortunately, however, slowing documents are a raw nerve few me, as it really affects my Onshape experience and costs money while I am staring are a spinning circle feeling powerless to fix the problem.

Firstly, I want to say that I love Onshape because of full cloud cad. It only works here good for the smaller / medium models, assemblies and drawings. I am experienced with large assemblies (machinery, structural, piping and plant designs) in Solidworks and Inventor for example. Now we have also built up several simple medium / large assemblies in Onshape.

In general I have to say that Onshape has speed problems with the larger assemblies. I have already had regular contact with the helpdesk. Plant design can only be carried out with great simplifications. Otherwise we have to wait a lot... Onshape is very laggy with the bigger/larger assemblies.

Onshape tells me that improvements are being made to the performances. I am very curious about these developments.

Can you hit CTRL+D on your problematic tab once you get it opened someday and post the data here, that gives better idea on complexity.

My stuff is usually very simple compared to machine makers but I do have some imported stuff that have thousands of parts and open without problems. Also some fairly large factory layouts that hold multiple semi-complex models, see an example data below. This took couple of minutes to open (no error popups) but once fully loaded can be flawlessly navigated and manipulated (I can easily manipulate 6 axis robot sub-assy within main-assembly) . It is main assembly that gets it's stuff from multiple documents.

I was thinking could your speed problems relate to growing amount of history data? I remember the days when Onshape had some 'filesize' limits for free plan and modeling history made a Big impact in size of very simple models.

I very much agree with you about being annoying to create all those useless versions just to be able to link the doc or update some minor change. Onshape should create those automatically and hide from user. I wan't to create version when I feel the need for Version, not to being able to work 'normally'.

I must say that Onshape is now running much faster and smoother with the new hardware. The hardware (videocard) is certainly important for the larger compositions! In addition, it is also important that all settings are correct according to Onshape. https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/webgl.htm

For the time being I am satisfied about the speed. Perhaps it is wise that Onshape sets the hardware requirements higher for large assemblies.